How Do You Define Intelligence?

Almost every Sunday, we meet with my father and his wife for an afternoon glass of wine. It’s Savennieres or Meursault in the spring and summer and the occasional rosé in the fall. In the winter we abandon the porch for the comforts of the inside because we are from the south and our temperaments are incompatible with any temperature below sixty degrees. With the weather not a consideration, it’s whatever sounds good. Maybe whiskey.

Before any of you Yankees make fun of us for running from the moderate to slightly cold, I challenge you to last an hour or so in an Alabama August day with ninety-plus-degree heat and humidity that makes walking through cheesecake seem breezy. You are inured to what you are used.

The congregation, in addition to my father and I and both of our wives, is a mix and match of my brother, his girlfriend, and our kids. We talk about what the kids are up to, what we’ve been doing over the course of the week, book and tv recommendations, and then we discuss whatever comes to mind.

A recurring subject is the nature of intelligence. What makes a person smart?

It’s not exactly a salon on dad’s porch because we let the nine- and fifteen-year-old chime in but the company – I’ve mentioned my less than credentialed academic career on these pages so count me out – is well educated. Swatting mosquitoes out there is a BA from Princeton and one from Duke, a couple of JDs, a medical doctor, and an MFA.

These are people that consider and argue.

I’ve separated the qualities I think are relevant into three categories, but I should note that I’m not expecting anyone to accept this article as definitive or to believe that I think anything here written to be so. These are musings and thoughts I’ve been tossing around for some time now, bounced off of people I respect, and refined as those people critiqued and offered their own ideas.

First there is knowledge. I consider this the ability to collect and retain information. It has to be paired with curiosity to be effective, but I’m considering the ability more than any driving urge. To a lot of people this is the end-all. It’s the making of a Jeopardy champion, but I’ve known too many absent-minded professor types to let this be the end-all.

After knowledge, I think there’s an understanding of how to properly deploy that knowledge to a useful purpose. This is how I see problem solving. It requires a well of information but also an originality of thought to look at the issue at hand and arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

The last of the three is cleverness. We’ve all met people that take in the mood of a room or the motivations of a person and find a way to turn that impression toward his or her advantage. It’s quite a gift, but like the other two, it can’t stand alone as a definition. I think we’ve all met someone who we’d otherwise consider an idiot but possesses base cunning and can manipulate people in ways that are unexpected.

I’m of the opinion that intelligence is a combination of at least two of the above categories.

I’ve had a friend since eighth grade. She was a terrible student. My school was grades five through twelve, but you couldn’t just pass and graduate to ninth grade. After eighth, you basically had to reapply. The rumor was that she made it on to high school because her dad plunked down a huge pile of cash and intimated to the headmaster that he was considering sending her younger siblings and all that tuition money to a rival school. In high school I wrote a ton of papers for her. She was an academic wreck.

But she was who you went to for advice on all non-academic subjects. Now she’s CEO of a local company that, though a boutique operation, just went national and to judge by her counter tops she’s doing just fine financially. Her husband is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. He’s got a PHD in theoretical mathematics and he’s explained his field to me several times and I’m still not quite certain what he studied. He’s taught at three universities and the two of them discuss the world as equals. Bad at the knowledge collecting, but I consider her extremely smart.

People are going to come to different conclusions. My group of Sunday wine drinkers certainly do. The JDs think it an ability to form a cogent argument and defend it. Why not? That’s their bailiwick. In a similar “this is what I do” vein, the MD goes with a combination of knowledge and understanding and sums it up as diagnosis. There’s a fine case for that. The MFA agrees. She writes and edits, and to her having knowledge and knowing how to use that knowledge is the measuring stick.

I’d nod toward any of those and hand out laurels, but I’ve noticed more and more that smart people are funny people.

This isn’t to say that a guy that makes a really convincing fart noise by squeezing his hands together is an Einstein. I’m talking about people who can hear something and quickly respond with a bon mot or a sharp one liner.

As a consoling lady-that-lunches said on The Simpson’s after a sharp put down was delivered, “Don’t worry, Marge. Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing.” You have to be fast. There is no esprit de l’escalier allowed.

A good sense of humor requires an agility with information, language, an ability to spot absurdity, and the wherewithal to point it out.

I’ve been having this conversation, as I said, for years and my conclusions have been promiscuous. I’d love to hear competing or confirming opinions in the comments.